Restaurant Website Design

What Matters Most in Restaurant Website Design

Many restaurant owners or marketers sit all day in their empty restaurant and wonder why no one is visiting. This can be dark, as without customer to dine in at the restaurant, your doors will close. And in today’s world, with the digital marketing revolution and restaurant website design in full swing, the internet and social aspects of online business are profound.

You need to have a great website design for your restaurant to attract the right customers. Therefore, you need to use the right methods. If you don’t, you’ll miss out on sales and give your competition the upper hand. So here is what matters most in restaurant website design:

Site Speed

In today’s busy world of digital tech and online distractions, the internet keeps us all very busy with too many things to focus on at once. People in general want more of everything in less time. This means that their patience is at an all time low.

People used to be willing to wait hours outside their favorite restaurant. Now, they’re hardly willing to wait 30 seconds online for your site to load. That’s why it’s so important to focus on having the best site speed possible. If a potential customer doesn’t wait for your site, they will simply leave for a competitor, costing you dollars. The page should load up fast, but also work fast and smooth while they are navigating your site.

Landing Page

There’s a saying that you only have once chance to make a first impression. This is the case with restaurant website design as well. Once someone lands on your landing page, why would you take the chance of them not having the ideal experience? Your landing pages should be the number one place most people see if they’re clicking through on an ad or typing your site name directly into the search bar.

There are numerous aspects to include in your landing page. You should have testimonials of other customers. This provides social proof, which can help sway them to dine at your restaurant. Consider using buttons like Yelp so that you can link directly to positive reviews. In addition, don’t have too much clutter on the landing page. Direct them to take one action, not several. For example, you might want them to call you, or to download a menu available. Be clear on this to capture and engage as much traffic as possible.

Imagery

Dining is a sensory experience. It involves the taste buds primarily, but also smell, touch, sound, and visuals. The same should go for your website. Since food is an emotional purchase, you need to have great photography. At Idealpro.com we have photography that is designed to fit your brand and attract more customers.

Menu Access

Have you ever logged into a website for a restaurant and not been able to see what ther menu is? It might have made you click away and never go there. Instead of keeping your food a mystery, allow them to see if it’s something they want. But you shouldn’t just post a picture of your physical menu. It can be hard to read, and frankly it’s not always pleasing to the eye. Instead, have a professional team help you design a virtual menu that will represent your food and your restaurant in the best way possible.

Hours and Location Information

Today, everyone is looking on their phone or computer for a nearby restaurant to satisfy their hunger. If they can’t find the information they need, however, they may never stop by. This could mean you lose a valuable customer. Always prominently display hours and location information at the top, bottom, or side in a dedicated spot of your website.

User Flow

The ways a user interacts with your website, called user flow, UI, or UX, is crucial. Without the proper flow, they might feel stiff or unnatural navigating your site. This can lead to site abandonment. Proper user flow makes it easy to find all the elements on a page with minimal clicking and typing. For example, if someone can’t find your order button because it’s hidden by another element on the page, this would lead to a lost sale. Proper user flow can create wonders for your bottom line and bring you new customers who become lifelong fans of your restaurant.

Colors

You might feel tempted to express your wild sense of humor or energy in your website. Depending on your brand, this could be good or bad. In general, your colors should reflect the tone of your restaurant, but not be too obtrusive. If it hurts to look at your site, people will simply leave it.

Content

Just because your website is not a blog, doesn’t mean you can’t have written content. Written content has a number of advantages. First, it helps you with SEO. Second, it can help sell the customers before they ever step foot inside your restaurant.

SEO

A great web design team can help you design your site with SEO in mind. SEO is important now, more than it has been in the past. This refers to optimizing your pages so that search engines can crawl and list them properly. Not all SEO is created equally either. For restaurants, there are different methods than for ecommerce stores, for example. People are using search engines to find restaurants all the time, and if you don’t rank near the top, you could regret it.

Why Use Idealpro.com?

At Idealpro.com, we know the importance of quality restaurant website design. That’s why we take the utmost care for each of our client to ensure they are satisfied with the final result completely.

We know the importance of site speed and usability. That’s why those are some of the top metrics we use when building your site and allowing it to rank in the top 90% of Google’s page speed tool.

What Services Do We Provide?

We offer a variety of services to suit your website needs for your restaurant website design. Using a WordPress custom theme we make custom plugins to make everything line up with your objectives. We include photography, audio, video and other web media as necessary to give your customer an experience they’ll never forget. Contact us for more information.

To Conclude

Long gone are the days when a restaurant could be successful just by opening their doors. Today, even if your food and decor and service is amazing, customers have to be able to find you online. With the right tools, team, and techniques behind you, you can enjoy more customers than you’ve ever had. However, if you fail to use the advice above or hire the wrong people, you could miss out on business. So take the advice to heart and you’ll sit back and enjoy more online success in your company’s history than ever before.

If you find yourself needing website design for your website, contact us today so we can get started on your project!

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Idea Pro designs, builds and maintains websites for businesses with the emphasis on maximizing performance by utilizing the most effective functionality tools and compelling content.

Our goal is for our customers to maximize their marketing R.O.I. by insuring a positive visitor experience every time a consumer visits your website. We are not vendors, we are true marketing partners.